


Hear me

by LemmingDancer



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia has PTSD, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Misunderstandings, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Soft Eskel (The Witcher), Timeline What Timeline, canon-typical cussing, dysphonia, no beta we die like witchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24469123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemmingDancer/pseuds/LemmingDancer
Summary: Geralt did not mean to invite Jaskier to Kaer Morhen. But meaningful communication was harder than usual at the moment, and the bard was making that puppy dog face, and Geralt was just too tired to fight it.  Now Jaskier has become fast friends with the other witchers, and that's good, right?----In which Geralt is just trying to put himself back together, and Jaskier wants to help, but he's not really sure how to go about it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 239
Kudos: 634
Collections: Best Geralt





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dysphonia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24299848) by [toffeecape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toffeecape/pseuds/toffeecape). 



> My mental model for Geralt is a mish-mash of game and Netflix Geralt, so he's not quite so emotionally constipated as he is on the show. The one true Jaskier will always be Netflix Jaskier. 
> 
> Also, I was about halfway through writing this when I read the work I've marked as a parent work, Dysphonia. Now I honestly have no idea where my ideas begin and theirs end, but either way, it was an excellent fic on the subject of Geralt's batman voice, so check it out!

Geralt did not mean to invite Jaskier to Kaer Morhen.

Look, it had been a rough year. He hadn’t been home, if he could call the fallen witcher keep home, for years. Winter on the Path brought fewer contracts, more time between meals. Three weeks after the first thaws, he found a contract that would provide enough money to feed more than his horse, some academic who wanted an escort on his “journey of discovery”. Turns out, the subject was witcher mutations and the journey was straight into a lightless cell to be beaten, starved, poisoned, and otherwise tortured to the breaking point by a sadist in sorcerer’s silks. But hey, upside, a lean winter meant Geralt didn’t have to wait long before the last of the meat melted from his bones. Escape was as easy as breaking his hands and slipping his shackles. The mage didn’t even get a chance to scream before Geralt’s aching hands clamped down on his throat, which Geralt found perversely fitting.

When Geralt finally banged on the university’s gate, his broken bones had just stopped grating against each other and he was three months overdue to meet Jaskier. All that remained of the bard in Oxenfurt were his musty rooms and a yellowing note bidding Geralt to do an anatomically impractical sex act with a goat and join him in Blaviken at his leisure. Which, rude.

Geralt had finally stopped listening for the bard’s prattle on the road, he had grown accustomed to the empty place beside ~~their~~ his campfire, when Jaskier tumbled back into his life. Literally.

“Oof,” Jaskier said as he came to a stop in beside Geralt in an ungainly tangle of clothes, instruments (was that a tambourine?), and limbs. “Must you pick such unreachable campsites, Witcher? There was a perfectly serviceable town not two miles back.”

Geralt blinked and just managed not to poke the bard in the chest to make sure he was real.

For his part, Jaskier sorted himself into a more-or-less functional human being without pausing in his rambling. “I heard rumors a while back, you had taken up with another academic, a professor mage who’s actually an acquaintance of mine.”

“Hmm,” Geralt ground out. The screaming had ruined his voice, again.

“Figured I’d seen the last of you for good this time, you off with your new sorcerer friend on grand adventures while little old me withered away from boredom at the university.”

Geralt scowled at Jaskier. _You know I hate sorcerers._

“Then I remembered you hate sorcerers. And months passed, and I heard no more of you. And normally I can follow you around the continent by a trail of monster guts and bandit corpses, but after that rumor about Professor Sondso there was no word of you, nothing…”

“He’s dead,” Geralt forced out. The sound scraped his throat like broken glass. He turned away and began to dig through his pack, searching through the wilted vegetables for something edible.

Jaskier ducked his head, trying to meet Geralt’s eyes. “Eh. He was a prick.”

Startled into a huff of a laugh, Geralt chanced a look up at the bard.

Jaskier wore a smile, a fragile little thing that looked likely to flutter off at any moment. He waved a dismissive hand. “I know, all my friends are pricks. Except you, of course.”

Shaking his head, Geralt pulled out his cooking pot. He could stretch his meal of stringy hare into enough for two if he made a stew. He’d rather give the whole thing to Jaskier, but the bard would question him if he didn’t eat.

Jaskier grinned and slung his lute around into his lap. “You have to hear this one, Geralt. Remember those twins in Novigrad? The, ahem, master swordswomen?”

They got back on the Path. There was nothing else to do, though Geralt still had cuts that reopened when he twisted too far, bones that ached when he got cold and a voice that came out bloody. They drifted from tavern to tavern, from contract to contract, plying their respective trades, or at least, trying to. The aldermen in the last village had stepped a bit too far into Geralt’s personal space and the witcher had backed out of the negotiation barely two words in. The village before that had nothing but silk clad merchants wanting bodyguards. Geralt hadn’t bothered seeking them out at all. They wandered close to Aretuza, which had an over-abundance of creatures attracted to the sheer power of the place, but as it also crawled with sorcerers, Geralt corrected their course as soon as soon as he realized his mistake.

It had been weeks since Geralt’s last successful contract. And success was a generous word. He’d taken half of the pay upfront, thank the gods, because by the time he was finished with not one, not two, but _three_ griffins, he had a limp and a dozen new bruises, and couldn’t force himself to go back into the town to collect the rest of the bounty. Jaskier argued for a solid three hours, for as long as it took for the lights of the place to fade from the horizon, but Geralt couldn’t risk it. He hadn’t managed to fight off Sondso, who was just one man and little more than a middling sorcerer, he’d never survive against an entire town in this state.

This morning had dawned offensively bright, to a clear sky and crisp air that carried sound for miles. Geralt listened hard as they walked side by side down the path, sorting through the cacophony to register the swish and thwack of farmers armed with scythes in the wheat fields, the crunch of teeth on bone from the distant forest, the clatter of a weapon against an anvil in a nearby homestead.

He didn’t even notice the bard’s silence until it had stretched for a long time. Possibly miles. Darting one more glance around for good measure, Geralt allowed himself to look down at Jaskier, where the bard was clomping along in his usual place at Geralt’s stirrup.

Jaskier’s face was pinched, and growing increasingly stormy, as he awaited Geralt’s response.

“Hmm,” Geralt tried.

“Hmm. Yes. Right. That is exactly my favorite racing saddle.” He clamped his lips together, a hard, white line against his reddening face. He stopped walking.

“Offieri?” Geralt asked with a cough. Roach stopped without Geralt’s intervention.

“You really do hate me, don’t you?”

_What?_ “What?” Geralt had ignored Jaskier’s prattle for years, could he really be that upset about horse tack?

“It speaks!” Jaskier shouted at the sky. The noise rattled in Geralt’s ears and set his head buzzing. He raised one hand to rub at his temple before he remembered that witchers didn’t get headaches and dropped it.

“I don’t,” Geralt said, because somehow the bard thought Geralt hated him, even though no other human was allowed to stand this close. 

Jaskier sighed. “I know that. But I feel like I’m torturing you.”

“This is not torture.”

“O-kay. Full sentence there. That should be reassuring. Why isn’t that reassuring?”

Geralt shrugged and nudged Roach into motion.

“I’m working hard here, harder than I’ve ever worked a crowd, to get some sort of response….and, you’re not listening again.”

“Nothing to say.” Geralt winced at the taste of copper in his mouth. He’d said too much already.

“Nothing? Not one little thing?” Jaskier asked. He jogged a bit to catch up to Geralt.

“About racing saddles?”

“No! Gods, forget the thrice-damned racing saddles.”

Geralt’s lips quirked up. He had forgotten they could do that.

“He’s teasing me,” Jaskier told Roach. “The man says 14 words a day, and 13 of them are to give me shit. And the last is just ‘Fuck!’”

Roach snorted in agreement and Geralt huffed at the two of them.

“See?” Jaskier asked. “I missed this. I miss you.”

Geralt frowned at Jaskier.

“I know, you’re right here. But, are you really though?”

Geralt shrugged. Some questions were too stupid to answer. Most of Jaskier’s, in fact.

“It’s just, we’re halfway to Kaer Morhen already.” Jaskier picked at the hem of his doublet, looking off at the mountains to the north. They’d loomed ever higher in the past few days, Geralt’s instincts driving him towards safety without him ever noticing.

“Geralt? I’m scared.”

Geralt twitched and looked around again, but there was still nothing but farms and furrowed fields for miles around. He forced himself to breathe out, dragging his focus back to Jaskier’s face, to the bard’s misty eyes.

“Tell me I’m imagining things, Geralt. You’ve never hesitated to call me insane before. Tell me I’m not…losing you.”

_I think I’m losing me too,_ Geralt thought nonsensically.

“Just. Stay,” he said instead, pointing at the ground.

Jaskier’s face crumpled.

“No.” Geralt pointed again, to the place next to Roach where Jaskier had been walking on and off for the past few years. “With me.”

“Oh! Really?” Jaskier reached up, clenching one fine-boned hand over Geralt’s gloved fist. The naked hope in his eyes hurt Geralt much more than his grip on recently broken bones.

“In Kaer Morhen.” He hadn’t spoken this much in weeks, months, but the blood on his lips was worth it, for Jaskier’s smile, for the flicker of warmth he felt in his gut.

So, yeah. Jaskier was coming to Kaer Morhen. _Fuck._


	2. Chapter 2

Kaer Morhen wasn’t what Jaskier was expecting.

Sure, it was a hulking heap of stone, a ruined monstrosity crouched against an appropriately intimidating mountainside, more landscape than architecture. Maybe it would have been properly terrifying if they’d arrived during a howling gale.

On this sunny fall day, the keep gleamed gray-gold in warm afternoon light, battlements gilded and sharp edges softened by age. An astonishing variety of late summer wildflowers bent their heads in the gentle breeze and green creepers trellised the rusting iron of the front gate.

“If this is the legendary witcher keep, where are all the witchers?” Jaskier asked as they emerged into the narrow, empty courtyard on the other side of the curtain wall.

Geralt brushed past him without answering, laden with saddlebags and weaponry. Jaskier hadn’t really expected a response; the normally taciturn witcher had recently gone from reticent to outright unresponsive.

This was the first time they’d formalized their plans to reunite in the spring, and Jaskier feared he’d asked too much of Geralt. The witcher made no secret of his preference for solitude, but he tolerated Jaskier, perhaps only because villagers were less inclined to spit when the bard could be caught in the crossfire. Although Geralt resumed travelling with Jaskier willingly enough, something had changed. Their barbed banter didn’t flow. Geralt didn’t even complain about Jaskier’s complaining any more.

Jaskier couldn’t help but feel like he’d missed his cue, like Geralt had played half the song without him and now he didn’t know where to come in.

But Geralt had asked Jaskier to accompany him to Kaer Morhen, to stay the winter with his witcher brothers. He didn’t mention them often, even back when they’d been on speaking terms, but when he did, he sounded almost wistful, of all things.

It was surprising, but only a little. A few days after he first started following Geralt around, he’d caught the witcher crouched down in the mud with a child no more than three years old.

“What are you doing?” he’d asked, for it was truly a bizarre sight, hulking black-clad warrior with his head down at the child’s level, both of them studying the ground.

“Catching snails,” Geralt replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Jaskier learned later that the witcher had found the boy’s parents dead in a nearby monster nest. If they had still been alive, no doubt they would have screamed and pulled the boy away from the mutant, but as an orphan the child had no one left to protect him but the witcher himself. And that’s what he was doing. Guarding the boy’s last few moments of childhood.

So Jaskier knew the myths about emotionless, monstrous witchers were bullshit, however much Geralt appeared to believe them himself.

That didn’t make the man any easier to read, though. Jaskier’s life quite literally depended on being able to read a room, he fed himself at the whim of his audience, but Geralt remained nearly as opaque as when they’d met a few years ago. Hopefully that would change this winter, and Jaskier would finally manage to peel back the Witcher’s shell.

Jaskier trailed after Geralt, taking in a scene seldom seen by outsiders. The keep’s inner wall rose in front of them, accessed by a path no wider than a game trail. It cut through waist-high grasses pushing up between the cobbles of an ancient training ground, past racks of weapons grown over by honeysuckle. Dust motes danced in the still air.

They entered a second courtyard showing more signs of life. A well-worn grindstone was shoved into one corner and barrels of supplies were stacked high along the walls. Someone had made a clear effort to beat back the progress of the vegetation, though they hadn’t bothered patching the gaping holes in the fortifications that showed a lake in the distance. The keep’s main doors stood at the top of a grand stairway, crusty hinges the size of Jaskier’s torso weeping rust down the trim.

Geralt ducked through a smaller door cut into the large one. Jaskier followed him into a great hall, a soaring space that dwarfed the greatest masterpieces of Nilfgaardian or Cintran architecture. Murals in red and gold depicting great battles with long-extinct monsters lined the entryway, disappearing into the gloom above, but the front half of the hall was well lit at eye level by a hearth the size of cart and torches set into every other the column. Bookshelves leaned against the odd columns. The far side of the hall devolved into a maze of crates, barrels, and more bookshelves.

“Are they all about monsters?” Jaskier wondered aloud, running one finger across the nearest shelf.

“Better hope your hands are clean, if Vesemir catches you feeling up his books, human,” a voice echoed from the depths of the room.

Jaskier swallowed his yelp as a man stepped into the light. He was Jaskier’s height, perhaps even shorter, with dark hair and a pleasantly forgettable, if slightly battered (and sneering) face. Even in bloodied, mismatched armor, the only thing to set him apart from some lordling’s second son was his eyes, as golden and slit-pupiled as Geralt’s.

“Don’t tease the man, Lambert,” another voice said behind Jaskier. He whirled and found someone standing at his elbow, though Jaskier couldn’t conceive of this man sneaking up on anyone. Despite a set of truly unfortunate facial scars that twisted his face into a permanent snarl, he was broad and sturdy as any farmer, with brownish hair. His cat eyes stood out even more unnaturally in his open face.

“I, uh—" Jaskier said, eloquently.

“Who are you with?” the friendly witcher asked, with a hideous smile that was probably meant to be kindly, if the gentle hand on his shoulder was any indication.

Jaskier looked around for Geralt. Really, if the witcher was going to save his life every three days, he might as well expand his services to rescuing Jaskier from awkward social interactions when the situation demanded. That was pretty much Jaskier’s whole job for Geralt most of the time, the witcher could return the favor any damn time now.

Geralt rose from where he’d been rustling through his saddlebags off to the side of the room.

“I’ll be gods damned,” the darker man, Lambert, exclaimed. A wicked grin wiped the sneer off his face as he stalked closer.

“…Geralt?” the other witcher asked.

Geralt just shrugged. His face was blank as ever, about as welcoming as a brick bulwark. He opened his mouth and croaked a word Jaskier didn’t understand, swallowed laboriously, and then gave a strange little wave.

The man next to Jaskier made a wounded noise, his hand going to his own throat. Before Jaskier had time to marvel at such an obvious and open display of pain from a witcher, the man was moving. He approached Geralt the same way Geralt approached scared victims and panicked animals, hands out and low. The naked fear on his face was a stronger echo of what Jaskier had been feeling since they reunited. But where Jaskier had stopped, pulled back, doubted, this man knew what to do. 

“I’m going to hug you now, you stupid, self-sacrificing son of a bitch,” he said to Geralt, though he stopped before taking that last step.

Geralt took it for him. He stepped right into the circle of the man’s arms and let himself be hugged. He didn’t really relax into it, didn’t hug back, but his forehead dropped onto the other man’s shoulder with a thunk and stayed there.

“Eskel?” Lambert asked. He stopped a bit back from the other two with both hands out in the air in front of him, as if reaching for something to do and coming up empty.

“Find Vesemir,” Eskel said without letting go of Geralt. “I think he went fishing.”

“We sure he’s the best one to handle this?”

“We got anyone else who can?”

Lambert scowled, but he was already in motion, snatching up two swords from the stack in the entryway.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jaskier asked. He made to move closer but stopped when Eskel bared his perfectly normal, human teeth in a snarl.

“His vocal cords are shredded.” Eskel answered. “Obviously. Like, painfully obviously.”

Geralt straightened with a sigh and made a face at Eskel, one Jaskier had plenty of experience interpreting.

“I will not lay off him, Ger. You’re functionally mute. It’s the kind of thing you can’t help but notice.”

Jaskier swallowed the lump threatening to choke him. “I knew something was wrong, but he talks sometimes.”

Eskel thwacked the back of Geralt’s head less than gently.

“I mean, not much,” Jaskier said, thinking back. “Maybe not at all these past few days, or even, weeks? Gods, Geralt, why didn’t you say something.”

Identical looks of disbelief from the wolves spoke volumes about his idiocy.

“What happened?” Eskel asked.

“I don’t know!” Jaskier threw up his hands. “Since he _obviously_ can’t talk.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Eskel said.

Geralt took a step back and raised his hands, but the slam of the door interrupted them.

“Got him!” Lambert shouted. “He never made it past the herb garden.”

The newest witcher to arrive, this Vesemir, had gray hair, a pot belly and a bulbous nose that had been broken too many times, and then a few times more. He wore a set of mismatched armor like the others, but it did little to lessen the overall impression of harried, over-muscled grandpa.

“Wolf. Wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again.” Vesemir said as he took in Geralt and Eskel, standing slightly too close together and looking vaguely guilty. “I gotta ask, boy. What happened in Blaviken?”

Geralt’s face crumpled. Jaskier had seen him react less to stab wounds. His stomach clenched in sympathy.

“No,” Eskel said as Geralt opened his mouth.

“No is right,” Jaskier agreed. He stepped up to the other men, ignoring the sudden heat of four sets of predatory eyes. He was pissed, mostly at himself, he was man enough to admit that, but he couldn’t let the implied slander stand.

“I’ve not spent three years praising his exploits in song, building his reputation, just to have his fundamental goodness questioned by those who should know him best.”

Vesemir smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “He would not be the first driven mad by the Path. I have to know he’s not a risk to those few of us still alive to walk it.”

Lambert was actually growling now, and Eskel had moved in front of Geralt entirely. Geralt met Jaskier’s eyes and shrugged.

“Bandits,” Jaskier said. “The men he killed in Blaviken were bandits, led by a lost princess willing to murder an entire town for revenge against one man.” They were Geralt’s words, almost exactly as he had said them, volunteered out of nowhere, on a random night, outside some no-name town on one of the last days they’d been together the previous summer. Jaskier kicked himself again for not questioning the witcher’s sudden, near-complete silence. For thinking it had something to do with him.

“Sounds about right,” Eskel said without looking away from Vesemir.

Vesemir pinched the bridge of his nose, then waved away the entire conversation. Jaskier relaxed as the other witchers straightened out of their fighting crouches.

“What happened?” Vesemir asked, pointing at his throat.

Geralt opened his mouth but Eskel clapped his hand over it. He squinted at their mentor.

“Go on then,” Vesemir said with a sigh. “You can’t really think I’d throw a fit over that now, after all these years? You three boys…you’re it.”

It was an apology in the grand tradition of witcher apologies, which is to say, it was not an apology at all. At least Geralt came by that naturally.

Eskel frowned at Vesemir, then dropped his hand, wiping it on Geralt’s sleeve with a grin as he stepped back.

“I don’t understand,” Jaskier said. “How do you expect…”

Geralt was gesturing rapidly, fingers dancing and hands cutting through the air, mouthing silent words to match the motions. His face had lost its stone cast, though the emotions chasing each other across it fled to quickly for Jaskier to really interpret, beyond the obvious pain that pinched the corners of his eyes and turned down his lips.

“Are you getting any of this?” Lambert asked Vesemir. “Because I’m getting maybe every third word.”

“I’ve spent decades pretending not to know about this secret language of theirs, that didn’t offer many opportunities for fluency.”

Eventually Geralt petered out with a sweeping gesture at the room around them. _And here we are._

Eskel sucked in a breath to respond, looked at Jaskier, and then began to gesture instead. Geralt very carefully did not look at Jaskier.

“Contract went sideways,” Eskel eventually volunteered, imitating Geralt’s syntax as well as his talent for understatement.

Vesemir sent Jaskier a glare, and yeah, maybe he should excuse himself when there was clearly something Geralt didn’t want to share. With him specifically. Which hurt. But now he knew the witcher was injured and he was worried, damn it.

“Your throat, Wolf,” Vesemir said. “They cut you? Pour something down your gullet?”

“They?” Jaskier asked, feeling faint.

Geralt shook his head. His face, so mobile a moment ago, was empty as blank parchment again. He tipped his chin up just a bit, enough to expose the pale, unbroken throat beneath his armored collar.

“Good. That’s good, Geralt. Okay. We know what to do. Lambert, we’re going to need meat.”

“Meat?” Jaskier asked. He’d never felt more like a duck in a hen house.

“To eat, you ponce,” Lambert said. “We’ve two more bodies to feed than we did yesterday, and one of them is two stones lighter than it should be.”

“Take the ponce with you,” Eskel commanded. “He can fish, or…sit quietly somewhere out of the way. I don’t care.”

Lambert looked mutinous for a moment but capitulated with a snarl. “Fine. Don’t get used to giving me orders, Eskel.”

Geralt made a couple of short, sharp gestures and Eskel broke into startled laughter, clapping Geralt on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him. Jaskier’s last glimpse of his witcher as Lambert towed him out of the hall by his collar was of the shy smile Geralt flashed Eskel.

If Kaer Morhen had been a surprise, Geralt in Kaer Morhen was a gods-damned revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I write Jaskier as young and a bit insecure, but. Well. Don't have a second half of a sentence there. That's just how I do.


	3. Chapter 3

Geralt woke up warm.

He immediately distrusted it. His mutated body ran cold when he didn’t get enough to eat, when he was in danger, when he was hurt, whenever the energy that would go into body heat had to go somewhere else to keep him alive. He’d been cold for a long time.

Disoriented, he scented the air for cues, only to choke on the overwhelming scent of blood, decay, and piss.

“Geralt?” a familiar voice asked.

Eskel. But Eskel wasn’t here, Eskel was safe.

“I’ve never seen anyone make laying down look like so much work, wolf,” Eskel said. There was a warm weight on his shoulder and a dull point digging into his lower back, points of contact that felt like home.

Geralt opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. He was laying on his side on the floor of Kaer Morhen’s great hall, tucked into the corner where they had cots for the nights when their own rooms grew too cold or they drank too much to bother stumbling back to them. Eskel sat between him and the rest of the room, leaning on the wall behind him with his legs crossed. He was whittling, one elbow using Geralt’s shoulder like an arm rest and one knee against his lower back.

He forced himself to take another breath, and the blood scent was still there, but mostly he smelled the chemical/animal smell of his brothers. Of course, they always smelled a little like blood too.

Eskel nudged Geralt with his knee. “Vesemir’s been at the alchemy table for hours. I forgot how foul that concoction of his smells.”

Geralt dropped his head back down onto his arm and wished he’d had the forethought to grab a pillow from one of the cots. By the time he’d finished soaking the road grime off his marred skin, he’d been delirious with exhaustion. He had a dim memory of Eskel looking him over with a muttered “Fuck” before his friend bullied him into clean clothes, nagged him into drinking something, and then pushed him towards the cots. He didn’t remember how he’d ended up on the floor in the corner.

“That whole room is going to stink all winter,” Eskel continued, the steady chuck chuck of his knife over wood never faltering.

Heaving himself over onto his back pressed Geralt even closer to the other witcher, but Eskel only slouched a little lower, draping himself over Geralt’s chest.

_Sorry_ , Geralt signed with one hand. The other rested limply on his belly, fingers twitching against the soft fabric. It was one of Eskel’s shirts, his scent wrapped all around Geralt.

“Eh. Just means Lambert might spend less time in there coming up with creative new ways to blow us all up.”

_No. Sorry…_ Geralt wavered. The words were easier this way, but there was still no good way to apologize for all the shit he’d brought down on his brothers since he’d seen them last. He shut his eyes.

_Forgiven_ , Eskel signed against his side.

A lute string twanged, cutting off the soft music Geralt hadn’t even noticed. It resumed a moment later, even quieter than before, the idle, tuneless ripple of chords that Jaskier tended to play when he was brooding. Because he couldn’t even do that silently.

Geralt raised his head to make sure the bard was in one piece after his adventure with Lambert. Jaskier was sitting in the corner across the room in his underthings, his clothes laid out around him, seeping lake water onto the flagstones. They were covered in feathers and a few downy tufts were still sticking out of the bard’s damp hair.

“You don’t want to know,” Eskel said. “Did he write that damn song?”

Geralt huffed and dropped his head back to the floor.

“I don’t know if I want to kiss him or kill him.”

_Eew,_ Geralt said. As you’d expect from a language developed by teenage boys, they had a lovely array of signs for disgust; this one involved a troll’s ass. Their signs had begun as variations on the gestures they used to communicate silently during battle, simple commands like _with me, look,_ and _stay_. But when their elders started whispering about eliminating failed experiments, Eskel had panicked. A week of nights spent in the library had eventually turned up a little book of pictures, a hand-signed alphabet and basic vocabulary. He worked with Geralt by the light of the moon, forcing his shaking fingers into the right shapes when he was too weak to do it himself. Vesemir eventually found out and burned the book, deaf to all Eskel’s pleas that Geralt didn’t need a voice to be a witcher.

The next day, Geralt had appeared in the practice yard, wan and hollow-eyed. “I’m ready,” he said in his broken voice. When he had to, he spoke, but most often he was silent, especially around the older witchers. In the privacy of the barracks, the complexity of their secret language continued to grow.

“I don’t know, the bard does have pretty eyes,” Eskel said.

Another twang from the lute across the room.

_He’s five,_ Geralt pointed out.

“True. Young, and stupid.”

Geralt raised his hands to say something, then dropped them. The block of wood in Eskel’s hands had acquired a distinct curve.

“Where’s the rest of that thought?” Eskel asked, nudging Geralt’s side.

_He’s good. But. He treats me like I’m human,_ Geralt finally signed.

Eskel blew out a breath that sent wood chips flying. “Humans. Every single one of ‘em thinks their shit don’t stink.”

Geralt huffed. _Exactly. Like humans are so great._

“But how many of them get a chance to learn any different?”

_How many try?_

A wave of new scents caught Geralt’s attention: stew, and bread reheated by the hearth. Vesemir entered, carrying a tray laden with dinner items.

“Yeah, I don’t think I can solve the race wars on an empty stomach,” Eskel agreed.

“Is that what you’re talking about?” Lambert asked. He was behind Vesemir with another tray.

“I think about more than bombs and boobs, Lambert. You should try it sometime,” Eskel said as he stood up. He tucked his hands under Geralt’s arms and dragged him to his feet before he could object to the manhandling.

Jaskier had stopped playing again, but he made no move to leave his place in the corner. Geralt jerked his head towards the table and tried hard not to smile when the bard sprang up with an eager grin.

They settled on the benches around the table. Eskel and Lambert tried sitting across from each other, but Geralt prodded Lambert in the ribs until he moved, leaving a bench for Geralt and Jaskier to share. Jaskier’s grateful smile sent another ripple of warmth through him, but the bard needn’t have worried. The three other witchers were starved for news from the rest of the continent.

“Redania still in the grips of that witch hunting fad?” Eskel asked.

“I fear they are only getting started,” Jaskier began, launching into a long and nuanced explanation of the most recent pogrom to spill blood in the northern realms.

Geralt mostly ignored the animated discussion, concentrating on getting his meal down as efficiently as possible, even though he knew no one would try to take it from him. The stew was hearty, a blend of salted pork and late season vegetables made palatable by Vesemir’s centuries of cooking experience. Seasonings and alchemy ingredients overlapped; many witchers made decent cooks when supplies and time allowed. Which was seldom.

By the time Geralt looked up from his second helping, the bard had become fast friends with Eskel, had argued Lambert into a stunned silence, and had even coaxed a smile out of Vesemir. Geralt had forgotten how utterly charming Jaskier could be when he dropped some of his performer persona and just acted like himself.

He told himself it was a good thing if they all got along; it would be a long winter otherwise.

Geralt rubbed his forearms as his skin prickled with goosebumps. Feeling watched, he looked up to find the table had lapsed into a lull in the conversation.

“You _have_ lost weight,” Jaskier said, his eyes on Geralt’s knobby, scarred wrists. “I never noticed. I mean, the gauntlets and the armor hide most of the evidence, but,” Jaskier looked up, “It’s in your face too.”

Geralt shrugged. A witcher could starve a long time before they succumbed to it. He stuck his hands under the table.

“Dessert anyone?” Lambert asked, with all the subtlety of one of his beloved bombs. “I think I saw Vesemir’s spotted dick in the kitchen.”

“You are a child,” Eskel informed him. “An overgrown, over-armed, child.”

“There is dick for dessert,” Vesemir confirmed like a man signing his own death warrant.

Geralt’s hands twitched, but he didn’t want to draw attention to his bony fingers by asking when dessert had become a part of the witcher mess.

“Dick is mostly fat,” Vesemir said. Lambert’s face had gone an interesting shade of purple and Eskel stuffed his hand in his mouth to stifle his laughter.

“That’s. Good.” Jaskier managed. “Fat. Dick.” The bard would fit in with Eskel and Lambert like a third brother, Geralt could already tell.

_It’s not necessary_ , he signed to Vesemir, trusting the older man read lips well enough to understand.

“I decide what is necessary in my keep, Wolf,” Vesemir said. He dug a vial out of his pocket and rolled it across the table. “It may even help get the taste of that out of your mouth.”

Jaskier looked at the decoction with open curiosity. “Will that fix him?” he asked.

Geralt shook his head. This was who he was.

“It will numb the pain and ease his breathing,” Vesemir said. “Only time will tell how much he will heal.”

“He’s having trouble breathing?” Jaskier asked. Geralt was beginning to wonder if they thought the mage had done something to his hearing as well.

“Hey Jaskier,” Eskel cut in. “Has anyone shown you the rest of the keep?”

Jaskier was on his feet and at Eskel’s side in a flash, and Geralt felt grateful to get out from under his concerned gaze, grateful they were getting along so well, grateful they were so interested in each other.

He took a swallow of his medicine. Dessert did nothing to disguise the bitter taste on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEYO dick jokes. I'm reliably informed by my brother that _boys_ (OOOoooOOO) make dick jokes. 
> 
> Also Lambert sweetie, the bombs, you love them too much. My brother (I do know other boys) SWEARS bombs are great, but I'm always like...but swords?!? I have two! I like 'em. 'How do you like that silver?' I shout as I whack the air in front of a bandit with a steel sword.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Furiously makes up witcher head canon*. Seriously, I've only read the first collection of short stories, played the third game and seen the show. 
> 
> Also, slight setting-typical ableism from Lambert ahead.

The last fair-weather days of the season were divided between hunting and repairs, both essential tasks to accomplish before winter truly set in. Geralt found it difficult to keep up with the other witchers, even though they had clearly slowed down to accommodate him. He often caught himself staring intensely into the middle distance, hands stilled mid-task and mind completely empty. Or stopping a conversation with Eskel mid-sentence to listen for enemies he knew weren’t coming.

Jaskier worked as hard as the rest, with only a bit of good-natured complaining. He somehow summoned the energy to play and sing most evenings, much to the delight of the other witchers. He hadn’t played That Damn Song yet, though.

The first real snow fall brought a well-earned day of rest. Geralt found Jaskier in the kitchen, bent over a messy pile of parchment. He tapped the table beside the bard’s workspace and raised an eyebrow.

“What? Uh. Sure? Please join me?”

Geralt sat at the table and opened his book, a history of Toussaint he’d been meaning to read for at least a decade. Jaskier went back to muttering to himself. He was composing, a near-constant activity on the trail that had been set aside in favor of winter chores.

“What rhymes with wolf, anyway? Maybe, ‘across a great gulf’? Or. ‘Love, it will…engulf?”

Geralt cringed.

“Oh quiet, you,” Jaskier said, bumping his shoulder. “I don’t stand around and make faces while you work.”

Geralt gave him a slow blink.

“Right. Well I guess I kind of do. But not in like a critical, judge-y way.”

Another slow blink.

“Fine! I do. I criticize your methods. But you could do with a bit of polish, you know.”

“Did the bard just lose an argument with the mute?” Lambert asked. He wandered into the kitchen with pillow marks still on his cheek.

 _Fuck a drowner, pup,_ Geralt signed at him, trying to ignore the way Jaskier lit up at the other man’s arrival. Geralt tended to drain the life out of most conversations, even when he had voice. Now he was just a dead space in the room.

Eskel and Vesemir shuffled in, their steaming clothes smelling strongly of hay and horse.

“Your evil mare bit me,” Eskel said.

“Don’t touch Roach!” Jaskier sing-songed. “If she doesn’t bite you, Geralt will.”

“He’ll break his teeth,” Eskel said.

A crash sounded from outside, startling Geralt to his feet so quickly he knocked over both bench and bard.

“What the hell, Geralt?” Jaskier asked from the floor.

“Your turn to go out into the snow,” Vesemir told him.

Geralt nodded. He heaved Jaskier and his seat upright, not allowing himself to linger with his hand on the bard’s shoulder.

He stood outside for a long time. The crash had been a bear, Geralt could still smell her in the air, likely looking for anything edible in a last push to fatten up before hibernating, but he lingered long after her scent had faded. The snow drifted down slowly in enormous clustered flakes that turned the world white. The sounds, smells and sights were muffled, the snow wrapping him in a soft blanket of still air. The only disturbance was his own breath rasping in and out. He stood in silence until the cold began to sink into his bones.

Returning to the keep, Geralt stopped outside the kitchen to shake the snow from his shoulders.

“Shouldn’t one of you check on him?” Jaskier asked, his voice carrying easily through the door to Geralt’s enhanced hearing.

“He’s just jumping at shadows, again,” Lambert said around a mouthful of something.

“He hears more than we do and you know it,” Eskel said.

“Really?" Jaskier asked. "I mean, I guess I thought all witchers—”

“Are all humans the same?” Eskel asked.

Vesemir’s leathers creaked when he moved, probably to give Eskel a glare. “Geralt’s always been different from the rest of us.”

Geralt swallowed hard. He knew, of course, but they tended to avoid stating it so clearly, drawing the line so cleanly.

“Yes, perfect, pretty-boy Geralt.” Lambert's old complaints were too well broken-in to sting.

“I don’t understand,” Jaskier said.

“They experimented on Geralt.” Eskel’s voice was distant, as if he had turned away from the rest of the room.

“He adapted so well to the mutations,” Vesemir said. “We had an opportunity to make an even better witcher. A creature that was stronger, faster—”

“And even less human?” Geralt had never heard Eskel challenge Vesemir like this before. “His hair fell out first, then his teeth, forced out by a new set of even sharper teeth. His bones grew longer. Hell, the shape of his face changed.”

“What made you even stop?” Lambert asked. His hatred of everything they were dripped from his words like the poisons flowing in their veins.

“He screamed until his voice broke,” Eskel said. “And even that did not stop them."

The only sound from the room was the crackle of the fire. Geralt wished he could see Vesemir's face. He wasn't in the habit of agonizing over a past he couldn't change, not like Lambert, but now he couldn't help but wonder, did their mentor ever doubt what they were, what he'd made them to be?

Lambert broke the silence. "They only stopped because they thought they had succeeded. He learned to be the shell of a man they wanted.”

“I know we failed, in some of our goals at least,” Vesemir said. Geralt couldn’t tell from his tone which parts of himself were the successes and which were the failures.

“Thank the gods for small mercies,” Eskel said.

“And don’t hold your breath for any large ones,” Lambert said. “Your only salvation is your failures, old man.”

Footsteps followed this declaration. Geralt tucked himself back between two crates and held his breath as Lambert stormed by, but he was too upset to notice Geralt. He waited for the man to disappear around the corner before heading in the opposite direction.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I made us sad. Here, now we do a happy...

Coming to Kaer Morhen was the best thing to happen to Jaskier since he met Geralt.

The other witchers were fascinating, as different from Geralt as fire was from ice. They rough-housed on the rug in front of the hearth, invented elaborate games to pass the time, and talked endlessly, telling stories from their lives with actual details, thank you Geralt. In a few short weeks, Jaskier not only had enough ideas for a lifetime of songs, he’d also made a genuine friend in Eskel. The approachable witcher smiled often and easily, and never hesitated to tease Jaskier into a lighter mood when the winter nights seemed too long and lonely.

Jaskier even got along with Lambert, who was, well. An asshole. But the dark witcher warmed up to Jaskier as soon as they discovered a shared love of formal rhetoric. Jaskier seldom had the opportunity to put his more esoteric university training to use, but he and Lambert passed as many evenings in formal debates as Jaskier spent shooting the shit with Eskel over ale.

Sometimes Vesemir would join them with his mortar and pestle, and Jaskier could pry another story from the eldest witcher about the wolf pups. Their first failed experiment with white gull deserved to be immortalized in song, and the story of Geralt improvising a weapon from a frozen ham hock made Jaskier laugh until he cried. Then he just cried and had to excuse himself.

Because coming to Kaer Morhen was also the worst thing that had happened to Jaskier since he met Geralt.

His witcher, instead of being lulled by the safety of his home into dropping his guard, grew more distant as the weeks went on, a pale ghost haunting the edges of rooms and conversations, except ghosts made more noise.

Jaskier had seen the wide, overlapping scars on Geralt’s wrists. He had put together some of what must have happened to the witcher, and Jaskier’s stomach turned every time he learned a new detail.

Geralt turned up to dinner early in their stay with his left hand splinted.

“Had to rebreak a few of the bones so they’d heal straight,” Vesemir said, reaching for the potatoes.

Over breakfast a few days later, Eskel passed Geralt a tub full of green paste. “Keeps burns supple.”

The first night Eskel convinced Geralt to go to bed on a cot instead of the floor, he thrashed awake screaming about drowning, the only words they’d heard from him in weeks coming out bloody and bubbling.

Jaskier wanted to help but found that a summer spent mis-interpreting Geralt’s silences as disapproval had little prepared him for the reality of a grievously injured witcher. What if he got it wrong again?

Eskel had no such problem, boyhood friends with a relationship of several decades and all that. He prodded Geralt into sword practice in an empty corner of the hall or dragged him into arguments with Lambert. Vesemir also had a sixth sense for Geralt’s moods, appearing at odd hours of the day with snacks and sweets as if fattening Geralt up was the only way he could express affection. Which, it probably was. Lambert just distracted Geralt by picking fights with Vesemir, which to be honest, was his approach to every problem ranging from crippling emotional wounds to bad salt pork.

The shortest day of the year brought a blizzard unlike any Jaskier had seen. Sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen, Vesemir announced they would celebrate midwinter in the usual way of witcher celebrations: by eating and drinking until dawn.

“What about the watch fire?” Lambert asked. He had on his deliberately-stirring-up-shit face.

Jaskier sat up. Witcher rituals outside of the trials were vanishingly few, and he was hungry for more of their traditions.

Vesemir sighed. “Haven’t bothered with that for years. But if you want to burn through a week’s worth of firewood in the name of men who are beyond caring, you get to drag it in from the snow.”

“I’ll help,” Eskel said. “It’s a good tradition.”

“Is it for honoring your ancestors?” Jaskier asked.

“We have no ancestors, bard,” Vesemir said. “And the dead are past our reach.”

“Wraiths are within reach of my sword,” Lambert said.

“Traditions comfort the living as much as they appease the dead,” Jaskier pointed out, hoping to prevent an argument.

“Well said,” Eskel agreed. “Comfort has been in short supply for some of us, lately.”

Vesemir rolled his shoulders and stood. “Use the north tower.”

“Jask, get Geralt,” Eskel ordered. “He’ll want to help.”

“How’s he…doing, today?” Jaskier asked, sidestepping the tortured elephant in the room.

“He’s been lying on his bunk staring at the ceiling for going on six hours now, how do you think he’s doing?” Lambert asked.

“Go, bard,” Eskel ordered, with a comforting pat on Jaskier’s clenched fist.

Jaskier went. The great hall was cold this morning, frost feathering across the windowpanes, but the sleeping area was near enough to the hearth to be almost comfortable. Geralt lay on the cot closest to the fire in loose trousers and a baggy shirt that pooled around his torso. He’d put on bulk since they arrived, but the hands folded on his chest still looked too big for the rest of him.

“Hey there, uh. Buddy.” Jaskier cringed. “You ready to get up?”

Geralt didn’t even twitch. Jaskier waved a hand in the air above his face, but the witcher’s golden eyes were glassy and unseeing, as corpse-like as his pose.

“Eskel wants to watch a fire. Or light a watch fire? Fires and watching are definitely involved.”

The v of Geralt’s shirt revealed a bony, lightly haired slice of skin, puckered by burn marks and puncture wounds in a variety of shades, some white and shiny with age. Jaskier couldn’t tell where damage from one trauma ended and another began.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asked.

With a deep breath that rasped like a metal file, Geralt came back to himself, his gaze sharpening on Jaskier. He wiggle-waved with one hand, and Jaskier finally recognized the gesture for the sign it was.

“Hey yourself,” Jaskier said, swallowing hard. Meeting Geralt’s eyes set a wave of loneliness through him, the now familiar feeling of missing a home you had never left. “It’s midwinter and Eskel wants to light a fire.”

Jaskier sat down on the cot across from Geralt, offset from him so he had room to swing his legs down as he sat up. His head was a mess of silky silver-white hair.

“Looks like you lost a fight with a blind, vindictive barber,” Jaskier said, before he remembered he was supposed to be careful with Geralt.

 _Yeah, Eskel_ , Geralt signed before blowing an honest-to-gods raspberry.

Jaskier laughed, the laughed again as Geralt tried smash his hair down. Geralt flipped him off with twitching lips.

 _Fire?_ Geralt asked. He mouthed the word clearly enough for Jaskier to understand.

“A watch fire? Eskel is really into it. Why is it so important?”

Geralt raised his hands, then huffed and lowered them again. Jaskier winced. He hadn’t picked up enough of the sign language to understand an explanation about the importance of a midwinter ceremonial fire, unless the reasoning turned out to be something as simple as _because it’s cold._

“Sorry,” Jaskier said. He’d avoided asking Geralt questions he couldn’t answer all winter, which generally meant avoiding being alone with him at all.

Jaskier’s heart leapt into his throat as a scarred hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged him to his feet. Geralt towed him over to where their winter clothes hung. Jaskier took the hint to get dressed more warmly before following Geralt deeper into the keep, exiting the hall through a door Jaskier had never noticed. Lambert and Eskel were already there, clearing the center of a partially ruined, round room. Wind whistled through a man-sized hole in the wall, blowing snow in a drift across half the floor.

“Wolf. Bard,” Eskel greeted them.

Geralt thwacked his arm and signed something.

“Tell him? Tell him what, Ger?”

Another flurry of signs.

Eskel scowled. “Fine. This isn’t just midwinter ancestor worship.”

Geralt scowled and opened his mouth.

“No!” they all shouted in chorus. Jaskier’s knees gave a wobble at the thought of him re-injuring his flayed vocal cords. Again.

“Alright, alright,” Eskel said. “Geralt wants you to know we light the fire to honor our dead. All of them. The ones whose bones lie bleaching on the Path of course, but also the ones buried here.”

Jaskier bit his lip to keep from asking more questions.

“You may as well tell him the whole story,” Lambert said. He leaned out the hole in the wall and looked at the ground outside.

“Fine, fine. But we’re going to work.”

Lambert grunted in agreement and then jumped out the hole in the wall. Geralt moved to stand in his place.

“Heads up!” Lambert shouted from outside. A piece of firewood appeared. Geralt snatched it out of the air, tossing it to Eskel, who handed it to Jaskier to stack along the wall.

“It’s not that interesting,” Eskel said. “You’ve heard this story before, a thousand different variations on an old theme.”

“I’m meant to be the poet here,” Jaskier ribbed. Geralt stumbled, and nearly missed his next catch.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eskel said. “So. We started this tradition the year Kaer Morhen was sacked.”

Jaskier winced.

“You know the drill. Some mage started rumors, spread propaganda, the usual bullshit about us stealing babies, and…I don’t know…fucking harpies for fun or some shit.”

“You think that’s possible?” Lambert asked, his voice distant.

“I think you’d try it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter why they did it.”

Geralt straightened and turned, signing to Eskel. A log appeared behind him, floating up to hover gracefully for a moment in midair before falling away again and landing with a clunk.

“Damn it Geralt!” Lambert yelled.

Eskel snickered. “Yes, Geralt. There had been a drought, a famine, a bunch of fires. Nothing a little mob violence against the nearest abominations couldn’t fix, of course.”

Jaskier shook his head. “I don’t understand. You’re witchers, surely people with pitchforks had no chance of taking the keep.”

“Most of us were away on the Path. It was a couple of mages and a two hundred angry peasants against a few dozen boys and old men. Our people never even saw them coming; they cut down boys in the training yards and gardens, we found men bent over desks who never even had a chance to draw steel.”

Jaskier’s fertile imagination had no trouble conjuring the images.

“We arrived in time to bury them. That was the year Geralt started the watch fire. ‘For the spirits still on watch in Kaer Morhen,’ he said, like the dramatic sop he is”

Geralt signed something obviously rude at Eskel.

They stacked wood silently for another hour, a repetitive task that did little to distract Jaskier from the images of golden-eyed children trampled to death, little Eskels stabbed through by pitch forks, white-haired boys burned alive.

“We got enough yet?” Lambert called from outside.

“Yeah,” Eskel said.

Geralt leaned out the hole in the wall and dragged Lambert back through it.

“Let’s find something to eat,” Eskel said.

* * *

The early hours of the morning found Jaskier alone in the tumbled down tower, taking his turn to stoke the watch fire. He could hear the witchers in the great hall, Lambert and Eskel slurring their way through the most profane version of fishmonger’s daughter Jaskier had ever heard while Geralt slammed his mug down in time amongst the remnants of the feast Vesemir had conjured. The eldest witcher tended to gracefully retire when the pups got in their cups, but tonight he joined the boys, even singing along for the chorus.

Jaskier smiled to himself, tossing another log on the fire and then dancing back as sparks flew, just managing to keep his wobbly feet under him.

“They’re good men, your brothers,” he told the ghosts of the tower, barely slurring the words together. He’d learned to pace his drinking around his companions.

The images of witchers cut down in their home would not leave him. From this ruined place, Geralt and the other wolves went forth to save the world that hated them. Jaskier had been with Geralt when he was spit on by the very people he’d just saved. He had thought he understood how the witcher must feel, now he wasn’t sure he ever could.

Rubbing his arms, Jaskier thought back to Geralt’s hand around his wrist. His witcher had quite literally reached out to him, and the gesture twisted Jaskier into knots. Geralt had wanted to share not only this tradition, but the story of it, with Jaskier. Just like the story about Blaviken, Geralt shared readily enough when Jaskier just…let him. Were the two of them constantly out of tune because simply Jaskier didn’t know how to talk to him?

Hand over heart, Jaskier bowed to the flames. “I can’t promise you that I will protect him the way you would have, with silver and steel. But I can be home to him as he is to me. I swear to you, I will do better.”

Jaskier returned to the great hall and sat beside his friend. He took the next shot along with the rest and sighed as the edges of the room blurred.

“Your turn to bring up another barrel, Wolf,” Lambert said as he emptied the last of the ale into his mug.

Geralt stood with a few halfhearted signs Jaskier read as silent grumbling. It was adorable, and did something funny to his chest he didn’t examine too hard. The bard waited until he heard the cellar door slam behind Geralt before leaning across the table to get Eskel’s attention.

“Hey! Listen! It’s important.”

“Wha?” Eskel asked. He had, with great effort, focused on Jaskier.

“Ok. Important,” Jaskier repeated. He wiggled his fingers. “Teach me to talk to Geralt?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up folks. We gotta earn that happy ending.

The winter passed in fits and starts. Weeks at a time were sunny and warm, the days burbling with the sounds of snowmelt and the nights sharp with the scent of ice. Then a three-day gale would pass through, dropping feet of snow and blowing man-high drifts up against the hall doors.

Geralt’s mood mirrored the unsettled weather. Many days passed happily enough among his brothers, mixing ingredients with Lambert or playing cards with Vesemir. He’d begun to taste his food at some point, instead of eating like he sharpened his swords: just to maintain a weapon. On good days he was lulled to sleep by Eskel’s snores and awakened by lute song.

The bad days were, well. Bad. But he spent less time looking over his shoulder and waiting for the next blow to fall, fewer hours staring at the ceiling while his mind ran in prison cell-sized circles.

Last week, he had a long discussion with Eskel about the best way to knock a forktail out of the sky (he argued for a crossbow, using Aard would require it to be within claw swiping range), and realized he was not dreading his return to the Path. He was good at his work, and he enjoyed that feeling of competence, much as he enjoyed the road unrolling beneath Roach’s hooves or Jaskier constructing increasingly ridiculous monsters for his songs just to get a reaction from Geralt. Now he remembered that itchy feet were as much a part of winter at Kaer Morhen as the savory smell of Vesemir’s favorite fennel tea.

The eldest witcher noticed Geralt’s cabin fever and pulled him aside six weeks after midwinter to have a blunt chat about his future.

“I know what Eskel says,” Vesemir said, “And I know you won’t let a little thing like complete muteness stop you from being on the Path. But your life will be a hell of a lot easier if you can speak out loud.”

Geralt shrugged. He missed trading barbs with Jaskier and the others, and he knew investigations would be practically impossible like this.

“I’ve been talking with the bard.”

Geralt narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t give me that look. Voice is his area of expertise. This happens to singers, you know.”

Geralt didn’t. It seemed like the sort of thing Jaskier could have mentioned at some point, but then, he and Eskel had been behaving strangely since midwinter. Well, Jaskier had been behaving strangely for a while, Geralt was pretty sure the bard had even turned tail and run from him a few times, but now Eskel was avoiding Geralt too. He hadn’t thought twice about it at first, Jaskier fawned over all the witchers and Eskel could make friends with a goat. But when he asked Eskel what was keeping them so busy, he outright lied about it, giving him some bullshit line about repairs without even trying to make it sound believable.

“Just talk to the boy, Wolf. He mentioned something about exercises. Humming scales and so on.”

He couldn’t help but make a face at that; Geralt knew what came out of his throat didn’t even approach musical.

“First though, let me look at you.” Vesemir reached for Geralt, not really asking permission, but giving him time to step away. When he didn’t, Vesemir pressed his fingers firmly against Geralt’s throat.

“That hurt?”

Geralt shook his head.

“Good. Your breathing sounds good, as good as it ever does anyway. Any coughing? Blood?”

No, neither of those, Geralt thought, a flicker of hope lighting in his chest.

“Alright, good. You said anything since you got here? Still screaming in your sleep?”

Geralt winced and shook his head.

“Think you’re about as healed as you’re going to get then, Wolf,” Vesemir said. “Your voice, that is. The rest will come.”

Biting his lip, Geralt struggled with himself. The nightmares, the phantom smells, the echoes of pain from long healed bones…he shouldn’t have any of those.

“So? You got anything to say?” Vesemir asked. “Or you can just give me a ‘hmm’.”

Geralt glared. Then he cleared his throat a few times. “Hmm?”

“There he is.” Vesemir smiled. “That hurt?”

Geralt shook his head. No more than usual, anyway. He frowned, then opened his mouth, half expecting Vesemir to jump down his throat for pushing too hard. One of Vesemir’s eyebrows climbed, inquiring.

“Other Witchers,” Geralt said, and though it sounded like scree tumbling down a granite cliff face, it was understandable. Ridiculously hard to get out, but that had more to do with what he was trying to ask. The books on the shelf behind Vesemir’s head were suddenly much easier to look at than his mentor’s face.

“What about them? Five words or less.” Vesemir had really been spending too much time with Jaskier.

“Others were hurt worse,” Geralt said. “Kiyan…” he had been taken by a mage, drugged, and skinned alive. Whether it was his mutations or the demon they’d shoved in his body keeping him alive, by the time Geralt put him down the pain had driven him mad.

“What happened to Kiyan, what has happened to many of our kind at the hands of humans, was terrible,” Vesemir said. “And I don’t give a shit about it right now.”

Geralt startled, looking at Vesemir again.

“Wolf, you know gods-damned well that someone always has it better and someone always has it worse. There’s fuck-all we can do about it. But you are here and alive, and that’s all I give a shit about.”

The corners of Geralt’s eyes prickled the way they did when he wanted to cry, but this body didn’t know how.

“And if you really think you are in the same category as Mad Kiyan, you can do laps around the great hall until we’ve run that notion right out of your head, because he _ate_ the mage that captured him.”

Geralt held up his hands in surrender.

Vesemir nodded sharply, then turned to retrieve a book from his desk. “For your bard.”

It was a slim, blue book with no title stamped on the cover. It looked familiar, but Geralt couldn’t place it.

“And for you,” Vesemir added, as Geralt moved to put it in his pocket without opening it. Intrigued, he thumbed through a few pages. Instead of text, they were filled with small, detailed illustrations of hand signs.

Geralt said wasn’t sure if the lump in his throat was scar tissue or more uncryable tears.

“I found another copy in a bookstore in Novigrad, some years back,” Vesemir said.

 _Thanks,_ Geralt signed. He didn’t trust himself to say more.

“Ach. Off with you, I’ve work to do.”

* * *

Geralt found Jaskier and Eskel in the kitchen, forehead to forehead with their fingers intertwined, straddling a bench in front of the fire.

Whatever he’d intended to say died at the sight of them. Apparently he’d been blind as well as mute this winter, but it was starting to make sense now. That whispered conversation about witchers being welcome in Oxenfurt, the way they disappeared after dinner and retired hours after everyone else, Jaskier’s tongue-tied avoidance of Geralt.

“Geralt!” Jaskier said. His face was cherry-red. “You’re up late.”

Geralt leaned hard on his decades of pretending to be emotionless to summon an appropriate response.

 _Unfrozen water,_ he signed to Eskel, pointing to the pitcher of drinking water next to the hearth while surreptitiously slipping the blue book into his pocket.

“Right!” Eskel said. If he was aware of Jaskier preparing to spontaneously combust from mortification beside him, he didn’t show it. “Night, Wolf!”

Geralt nodded to him and gave Jaskier what he hoped was a normal half-smile. He had no claim on the bard’s affections, friendly or otherwise. And he’d never begrudge Eskel a companion as loyal as Jaskier, either. They made far more sense together than Geralt and Jaskier, a mute and a songbird.

* * *

Avoiding Jaskier and Eskel for the rest of the winter was proving easier than Geralt expected. The keep was large, especially if Geralt didn’t limit himself to the heated rooms. He quietly moved out of the main hall and back into his high tower room. Though he hadn’t stayed there for years, the place was undisturbed, still full of things before-Geralt thought were important enough to keep; old contract announcements, family heirlooms offered as payment by people who had nothing else to give, notes found in victim’s pockets documenting their unrealized hopes and all-to-real fears. His first pair of swords hung at the top of the stairs, silver dull and steel spotted, hilts worn into grooves that no longer fit his hands.

If Geralt descended for breakfast early, he had his brothers to himself for a while; Jaskier was as nocturnal as a nightwraith. The bard also tended to choose kitchen and clerical duties when offered the chance, so Geralt needed only to stick to the stables and practice yards to avoid him during chores.

Evenings shared among the five of them became the high point of the day. In such a large group, Geralt could safely enjoy his friends without fear of coming between them.

It was confusing though. For all Jaskier’s claims to the contrary, Geralt was pretty good at reading emotional cues; knowing when a volatile situation was about to turn violent could be the difference between life and death. His experience with healthy affection was admittedly limited, but Eskel and Jaskier just didn’t act like a couple. They didn’t even act like particularly close friends. In fact, this morning Geralt had overheard an argument between them that ended with Eskel calling Jaskier a “hen-hung cringeling.”

When they weren’t questioning each other’s manhood, the two of them did touch more than the rest of the pack put together. But they were both physically affectionate people. In fact, Eskel was the only one who consistently touched Geralt, draping himself over him after sparing and leaning back to back as they shared hot water for a bath. Jaskier used to be the same. Geralt was so glad that Eskel hadn’t let this…whatever…with Jaskier change their relationship that it brought him to phantom tears to think about.

It was another sunny day, the kind of day that fooled you into thinking spring had clawed the world back from winter, and Geralt was walking back from the stable when he caught sight of Jaskier alone atop the inner wall. Jaskier perked up like Roach seeing an apple when he made eye contact with Geralt. The witcher made the snap decision to climb up and chat a minute with the bard, and why not? Eskel had stomped off to the lake to “make something dead”, and he had known Jaskier first, damn it.

By the time Geralt navigated the crumbling staircase to the top of the wall and looked up at Jaskier again, his entire demeanor had changed. The bard was sitting sideways, one leg tucked under his body, scrambling with the papers that had been spread out on the wall in front of him.

“G-geralt!” Jaskier exclaimed. His face was reddening, sending a flush of color down his neck.

 _Hey_ , Geralt signed. He tugged the corner of one of the papers teasingly.

“No!! Don’t!” The bard yanked the mess of parchment close to his body.

Geralt jerked back, throwing his hands up. Jaskier’d never been shy about his compositions before.

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Jaskier said. “Just, don’t, ok?”

Taking another step back, Geralt shrugged. He eyed the bard, who was making little aborted movements to straighten the papers against his chest.

“How are you?” Jaskier asked, still flushed.

Geralt shrugged again. The answer was too complicated for him to put into words in any of the various languages at his disposal. 

“How’s…Roach?”

Making a face, Geralt lifted his shirt, showing the bard the bruise on his side where she’d bitten him for spending too long in her stall. The witchers weren’t the only ones looking forward to getting back on the road.

Jaskier huffed. “Still Roach then.” One of his hands came up as if to rub over the mark, but then he yanked it back.

“And. Uh. How are you? Wait, have I…?”

With a quirked eyebrow, Geralt told him that yes, he’d already asked that question.

“Right. Right, good.” The bard’s eyes darted from Geralt’s face, to his hands, to the valley bellow, and back in a nervous circuit. “It’s, uh. Salt pork for dinner tonight, I hear.”

Geralt sighed and turned away from Jaskier to scowl at the scenery. It must have been wishful thinking on his part when he thought the bard was glad to see him. Maybe Geralt’s broken pieces just didn’t fit together with the bard anymore, maybe meeting other, normal witchers had revealed to Jaskier how twisted and wrong Geralt was by comparison, but he hadn’t had a normal conversation with the man all winter.

“So, uh. Yeah.”

Geralt cleared his throat. He hadn’t really gotten back in the habit of speaking aloud, but this was important. “You are unhappy.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous! Your brothers are a joy, Vesemir’s cooking is revelation, and the stories, Geralt, the stories!”

The smile got twisted up on Geralt’s face, but it was there. He was glad to have brought the people who meant the most to him together, even if it made his Path lonelier in the long run.

When he had his face back under control, Geralt turned back to the bard. He leaned his hip on the wall and tapped the stone between them, pointing to his home. “Should I leave?”

“Uh. Well. Honestly, that’d be great.” Jaskier looked relieved, and Geralt forgave him for that. They had reached the point where their awkward interactions were more painful than not speaking.

Still, he couldn’t quite keep the surprise off his face. Years of trying to get rid of the bard, and now he was just telling Geralt to leave.

“Winter’s almost over,” Jaskier said, words speeding up as he warmed to the idea. “I have so much to learn, Geralt.”

He was right, Geralt could probably make it out of the mountains now if he didn’t get caught in any late season storms. It was risky, but he saw no reason to stay where he wasn’t wanted. Human lives were short, he’d let Jaskier fill his with people that gave him joy.

Geralt nodded. He straightened and turned to go. At the top of the stairs, he found himself hesitating, looking over his shoulder at the bard. Jaskier had spilled his papers out onto the top of the wall again, his hair gleaming in the weak spring light as he bent over them.

It didn’t feel right, to be so casually dismissed by Jaskier, not after everything they’d been through. He cleared his throat again.

“You really want me to leave here?” Geralt asked, the words were thick on his tongue. Then, as close as he could come to asking him to reconsider, “You won’t come with me?”

“Pbbt. Of course not. I have work to do here,” the bard said without looking up.

That was going to hurt like a bitch later, but for now, Geralt shoved the whole conversation into the mental box where he kept his memories of the trials and torture. He had bags to pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I embellished Mad Kiyan's story (from the Witcher 3 game) and jumped it forward in the timeline.


	7. Chapter 7

Jaskier patted the neat stack of papers in front of him with a sigh of satisfaction. It had taken the last half of winter to collate the hand-written and illustrated notes before him, but he retained better when he wrote knowledge down, so creating a dictionary of the wolf school’s sign language was a natural enough extension of learning it.

He leaned back in Vesemir’s chair and let his mind wander as he stared blankly at his handywork. He tried to imagine Geralt’s reaction to his gift. His witcher’s most common smile was a tiny thing that was all grudging hesitation. Jaskier had seen his real smile now, though. It wasn’t a face cracking grin like Eskel’s, but it made his eyes light up like coins.

“Jaskier!” Eskel called from somewhere deeper in the keep.

Jaskier stood and stretched, then wandered out of Vesemir’s office. A few hundred feet down a corridor he’d never taken he found Eskel pacing at the bottom of a set of stairs.

“When was the last time you saw Geralt?” Eskel asked.

“Uhm,” Jaskier winced. That had not been a fun conversation. “Midday, the day before yesterday.”

Eskel scowled at his expression. “What happened?”

“Nothing! Just the usual, we-can’t-talk-to-each-other dance.”

“Really.”

“What?” Jaskier asked.

Eskel scowled and resumed pacing. “I haven’t seen him for days either.”

“He has been wraith-like for most of the winter.”

“Not for me,” Eskel said with a glare. “Never for me.”

Vesemir poked his head out of a doorway down the hall. “What’s going on?”

“Roach is gone,” Eskel said. “Has been for awhile.”

“I just complained about the lack of fresh meat, maybe he went hunting?” Vesemir asked. “He should be back soon; it smells like snow.”

Lambert clattered down the stairs looking ready to explode. “Nothing but his really old stuff up there.”

“Gods damn it,” Eskel said, slamming his fist against the wall and leaving a bloody mark. “I told you bard. I told you we were confusing him.”

“You say something to him?” Lambert demanded of Jaskier.

“No! I didn’t, just the usual ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine, how are you?’ ‘Fine, how are you?’ stuff we’ve barely managed all winter.”

“I don’t get you,” Eskel said. He whirled on Jaskier, jabbing him in the chest. “You say you want to know him better, but when he seeks you out you don’t even try to talk to him.”

“I fucked up bad last summer, Eskel.” Jaskier swallowed hard. “He was hurting, and somehow I never even heard it. I just wanted to do it the right way, to learn to talk the way…”

“You idiot! You just said it! You don’t need to learn another way to talk, you just need to listen!”

“Eskel, enough,” Vesemir said. “Bard, you saw him last? What happened? Include all those details you’re so fond of.”

Jaskier huffed. “I was on the wall and I was working on the book of hand signs. He came up, to talk I guess.”

Lambert opened his mouth with a snarl, but Vesemir gestured sharply for him to be silent.

“Anyway,” Jaskier rushed on with the story, “I wanted it to be a surprise, so I sorta snipped at him when he tried to look—”

Eskel growled.

“He’s a big boy, Eskel,” Vesemir said. “He didn’t leave just because the bard snapped at him.”

Jaskier frowned. Something about that phrasing tickled his memory. “Well. I wanted to finish the pages I was working on before I lost the light, so I had him come back to the keep without me.”

“Think Jaskier,” Eskel said. “Words are your gods-damned trade. What exactly did he say? What did you say?”

Jaskier felt the color drain from his face.

“What?” Lambert demanded.

“He asked if I wanted him to leave.” Jaskier shut his eyes. “And I said yes. Twice.”

Jaskier opened his eyes in time to see Eskel’s fist swing at his face.

* * *

Days later, Jaskier was still sporting a black eye that covered half his face. It didn’t feel like nearly enough punishment.

True to Vesemir’s prediction, it had begun to snow soon after they discovered Geralt missing, the first noncommittal little flurries fluttering down as Jaskier secured his saddlebags.

“You’re a fool,” Vesemir had told him as he handed over another sack of supplies. “He’s far more capable of surviving a storm out there than you are.”

“I am a fool,” Jaskier agreed, swinging himself up into the saddle.

“He’ll head south-east,” Eskel said. “We stick to the game trails and hunter’s cabins, but there’s a village there too.”

“Think he’ll go into the village, if the storm gets too bad?”

“He’d die before he went into that village,” Eskel said. “But you’ll die if you don’t.”

* * *

Eskel was probably right about Jaskier freezing to death in the snow. A long day of hard riding on increasingly bad roads brought him to a little hamlet of 30 or so homes, with a single tavern that had a few open rooms for travelers. Now he was standing on a table in the center of a warm common room, surrounded by jubilant villagers singing along with his (non-witcher songs) while a blizzard raged outside. It would have been cozy, if Jaskier could overlook that that they were responsible for the sacking of Kaer Morhen and the massacre of its children.

“Seems early season yet, for a traveling bard,” the alderman had said, before Jaskier had even shaken the snow from his shoulders. He was a thin, anemic old man with sharp eyes in a seamed face, his suspicion at odds with the general air of celebration around him.

“I found my welcome wearing thin at my winter appointment,” Jaskier had said, before heavily implying the existence of a jealous lover or two. It wasn’t an entirely incorrect assessment of the situation.

“Don’t scare the bard,” the land lady said, coming up behind him to plunk down a weak broth and some hard bread. “I’ll not turn away anyone in this storm, let alone the only entertainment we’ve had for months.”

“Agata, your city underskirts are showin’,” the alderman told her. “Only one winter, and you’re already mad enough for entertainment to let anyone in.”

But the rest of the room shared Agata’s desire for entertainment, and calls went up for a song. Jaskier had barely had time to scarf down his unpalatable dinner before he was tugged to the center of the room for an hour of nonstop singing.

He was taking a break to gulp down a watery ale and trying to distract himself from images of Geralt freezing to death in the night, when he noticed something strange about the crowd.

“What troubles this place of men?” Jaskier asked the alderman. Everyone in the village seemed to be in the room, from babes in arms to old men with canes, but at least two thirds of the crowd were women.

“The usual troubles,” the man grunted, still chewing. He hadn’t exactly warmed up, but he stopped viewing Jaskier as an outright threat after ‘Her Sweet Kiss’.

“The usual kind. What, wandering hands? Leaving to seek better fortunes? Military conscription?”

“Monsters.”

“Like, monster monsters?”

“There any other kind?”

“There’s the kind you call monsters because you’re too scared and stupid to learn any different,” Jaskier said.

The alderman swallowed and brought his too-sharp attention to Jaskier. “How’d you come to be here again, bard?”

“Hey bard!” another patron called. “Give us another song.”

“My adoring public awaits!” Jaskier said as he jumped back up on his table with far more enthusiasm than the request required.

“Let’s hear a song about the white wolf,” a feeble voice called.

Jaskier scowled at the old man who’d spoken and received a toothless grin in return. A loaded silence fell on the room.

“Eck. Let’s not make a gloomy evening any more uncomfortable,” Jaskier said. “How about _The Fields of Ard Skellige,_ eh? Only sang that, uh, once already—"

“Go on, bard,” the alderman said, staring down the old man. “Sing us a song about a monster.”

Jaskier bit his lip and counted to three. “You know what, I have just the thing for you. Brand new song, just finished with it actually.”

Plopping himself down on the table, he crossed his legs and began to sing.

_"The call of the White Wolf is loudest at the dawn_   
_The call of a stone heart is broken and alone_   
_Born of Kaer Morhen_   
_Born of No Love_   
_The song of the White Wolf is cold as driven snow_

_Bear not your eyes upon him lest steel or silver draw_   
_Lay not your breast against him or lips to ease his roar_   
_For the song of the White Wolf will always be sung alone_   
_For the song of the White Wolf will always be sung alone_

_Cast not your eyes upon him, lest he kiss you with his sword_   
_Lay not your heart against him or your lips to ease his roar_   
_For the song of the White Wolf I’ll always sing alone_   
_For the song of the White Wolf I'll always sing alone"_

Jaskier looked up from his lute strings to find every eye in the room fixed on him.

“You sing as if you know the beast,” the alderman said as he climbed to his feet.

“I know him, and he’s the best man I’ve ever known,” Jaskier said, because he was on edge and, as already established, an idiot.

“Hmph,” the alderman said. He gestured at the two men sitting beside the door, who exchanged a glance and stood.

“Uh, listen. We can agree to disagree on that point,” Jaskier said. But instead of coming after him, the two men exited the tavern.

“You’re right,” the alderman said to Jaskier. “Something was taking our men folk, picking ‘em off like prey when they strayed to far from the herd.”

The door opened again, and the two men re-entered in a swirl of blowing snow, dragging something between them that they threw to the floor.

“We caught it though. And maybe it will talk to you,” the alderman said.

Geralt lay unmoving at Jaskier’s feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Song of the White Wolf_ , which actually sounds better than it looks written out, was written by Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli.
> 
> Sorry it's late and more haphazardly edited than usual. Migraine is killing me.


	8. Chapter 8

Warm hands on Geralt’s face dragged him slowly out of his half meditative, half-unconscious state. The sudden warmth on his cold skin burned enough he couldn’t stop himself from trying to twitch away. The hands let him go, which was surprising enough he risked opening his eyes.

“Hey,” Jaskier said. The bard’s eyes were wet.

Geralt tried to respond, but only managed a grating cough that spattered blood across the floor. The cold had never been good for his throat. He had no way of knowing how long he’d been tied up outside, staked to a post in the snow as the blizzard raged, but it he knew it was long enough to kill a normal man several times over.

“Get these off of him, immediately,” Jaskier ordered, touching the shackles that bound Geralt’s hands behind him.

“Why would we do that? Free him, so he can butcher us?” That was the alderman. When Geralt had figured out this town had a monster problem, he’d gone straight to him in the hopes that he was smart enough not to jump to conclusions. He’d hoped in vain.

“You want me to talk to him? Then you’re going to untie him.” Jaskier wasn’t budging.

“Janusz, you know he couldn’t have taken Karl and Aleksy.” Geralt didn’t recognize this feeble voice, but the declaration sent a ripple of consternation through the crowd.

“Karl and Aleksy? When?!”

“It can’t be, we’ve had the monster for days.”

“There must be more of them.”

“Silence!” the alderman snapped.

“Free him,” Jaskier said, “Otherwise I can’t talk to him. There are enough of you, he’s unarmed. I swear on my life, on my hands and my voice, you’re in no danger from him.”

Geralt could hear the clank of them removing his bonds, but he couldn’t feel it. Pretty much the only thing he could feel was the hum of his medallion vibrating against his chest. Whatever he was hunting, it was in the room.

“Ger?” Jaskier asked, and Eskel’s nickname for Geralt in Jaskier’s mouth jabbed at the wounds he had forgotten about.

Geralt dragged his numb arms around in front of him and levered himself up to his knees.

“Can I?” Jaskier asked, and Geralt discovered that it didn’t much matter what he was asking for. He nodded. The bard reached out and pressed both hands to Geralt’s neck, encircling his throat in a band of soft warmth.

The silence in the room was so complete, the witcher could hear the hiss of snow across the thatch.

“You were supposed to avoid this place,” Jaskier said.

Geralt shrugged. _Monsters,_ he signed.

“He’s casting spells,” someone shouted.

“No!” Jaskier said. “No. Believe me, you’d know if he was.”

“What is he doing?” the alderman asked.

Geralt narrowed his eyes at the man, and then very deliberately flipped him off.

Jaskier laughed. “Talking. Obviously. Do you need an interpreter for that one?”

A cackle from the old man by the fire startled all of them. “Let the man talk, Janusz.”

Jaskier leaned back. Geralt resisted the urge to chase his hands as they fell away from him. “What kind of monsters?” Jaskier asked, but his hands were having a different conversation, _it only takes men._

Geralt blinked at him, his own hands frozen in midair.

“Perhaps kikimora?” Jaskier asked. _Eskel taught me. I wanted it to be a surprise._

 _I am surprised,_ Geralt responded. Warmth was spreading through him, whether from the room or the sudden reinterpretation of the past few months, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have time to examine it.

“Right, I forgot kikimora hibernate,” Jaskier said. _What are you doing here?_

 _There is a monster in this room._ Getting captured hadn’t been a particularly brilliant plan, in hindsight. Knowing there was a monster in the room really didn’t help much, unless he was willing to butcher his way through the whole room like they apparently thought he was. 

“What about a wraith? They aren’t seasonal.” _Must look human. What is it?_

Geralt shook his head. _Maybe asp, a vampire. I already killed one._

“So not a wraith then.” _That will make the other one mad, right?_

Geralt considered. He had caught a nose-full of decay while skirting the town and had followed it to a nearby cave. The first asp was there amongst the bodies of her victims, but she’d been a mad thing, incapable of reason or conversation. A trail of footsteps leading back to town suggested she was relying on another to bring her food, someone embedded in the village.

“What’s he saying, bard?” the alderman said.

 _Good idea,_ Geralt signed. _The head is with Roach, north of town._

“Are there any abandoned buildings north of town? Like a barn or something? Check there.”

The alderman frowned at Jaskier. “And send what few men I have into an ambush? I think not.”

“Or you can sit here and get picked off one by one until there are none left at all.”

“Fine.” The alderman gestured to the men by the door again, and several exited.

Jaskier rubbed his hands together, then reached across to put them on Geralt’s throat again. The warmth was breaking things loose inside him.

 _You said you wouldn’t follow,_ he signed before he could really think. It wasn’t like their audience could understand anyway.

“I, uh, I meant to the kitchen. When I said I wouldn’t follow. I wasn’t going to follow you to the kitchen, because I had work to do. On another surprise for you, actually.”

Geralt blinked. Then blinked again. _I asked if you wanted me to leave Kaer Morhen._

“Well! You kinda did. I mean, you didn’t exactly say ‘Jaskier, I’m being a big insecure noodle right now, do you want me to leave my home and my family and get captured by angry villagers in the middle of a godsdamned blizzard?’ Because if you had, I would have put a stop to this nonsense before we were in the clutches of a bunch of child murders.”

“…Family? What are you talking about?” the alderman asked. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be confused or insulted.

Jaskier shook his finger at the man. “I’m not talking to you right now.”

 _I asked twice,_ Geralt signed.

The bard deflated. “I know. Or, I figured it out eventually. I was so worried about saying something wrong that, uh, I wasn’t listening to you. Again. I’m sorry.”

_You’re an idiot._

“That’s what Eskel said.”

 _That explains the black eye._ Geralt glared at his knees and thought hard about their last disastrous conversation. _He’ll give me a matching one, next time he sees me._

“Probably. Idiocy seems to be contagious.”

The door slammed open. The men who had left to investigate Geralt’s campsite reentered, laden with his saddlebags and supplies. The one in front had his swords cradled in one arm and a bloody sack in his other hand.

A gasp went through the crowd as he shook the bag, sending a bloody head flying. It landed with a thump in the middle of the room.

The landlady hissed, her features suddenly shifting. “Elsa!”

Several women screamed. Tapping reserves of strength he hadn’t known he had, Geralt sprang to his feet and dove towards the man with his swords. The man managed to hit the witcher hard across the cheek, but Geralt ignored the sting, drawing his silver sword from out of the man’s hands and spinning away.

“Drop it, witcher,” the asp hissed. She had her long-clawed fingers resting lightly on Jaskier’s pulse point.

Geralt wavered.

“Oh this is too good,” the asp said. “The one village in the continent least likely to be saved by a witcher, and when their only hope delivers himself to them, they beat him half to death and leave him to freeze in the snow.”

Jaskier made a wounded noise.

“And now you’re going to let me go,” the asp continued, “For the very same reason you let them take you: you care too much about these spineless, immoral creatures.”

Geralt met Jaskier’s eyes. The bard twitched his fingers. _Ready?_

Jaskier slammed his elbow into the asp’s stomach. It surprised her more than it hurt, but it was enough to loosen her hold on the bard. Geralt swung his sword as Jaskier dropped, the blade rustling his hair as it sliced over his head and through her throat. Her head arched away gracefully.

A cackle broke the tense silence that followed. “I told you, Janusz. I told you we needed to call a witcher,” the old man said.

“I didn’t think any would answer, if this village called,” the alderman said. He was looking hard at the first asp’s head, the monster Geralt had killed before even coming into town. 

Geralt rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. _Come here,_ he signed to Jaskier.

Jaskier stepped close enough for Geralt to grab him by the elbow and tuck him close.

“Thought that sword was for monsters,” the old man said to Geralt.

“It is,” Geralt ground out. He began to back towards the door, keeping Jaskier behind him.

“Storm apparently won’t kill you,” the alder man said. “But it will kill the bard.”

Geralt stopped. “He safe here?”

The alderman shrugged. “Saved our lives, I think.”

Geralt looked around the room. Most of the crowd was even parts surprised and horrified, but a healthy dose of embarrassment colored not a few cheeks. The sharp tang of fear was fading.

 _Oxenfurt_ , he told Jaskier.

“No,” Jaskier said. “I’m following you.”

The old man by the fire rose. Leaning hard on his cane, he wobbled over to the middle of the room and stood between the alderman and the witcher, unbothered by the naked silver blade. Geralt lowered it automatically.

“You know we’ve done wrong, Janusz. Again.” The old man said. He poked the alderman in the chest. “Be the man I raised you to be, and don’t repeat the sins of your father.”

The alderman bit his lip. The silence stretched.

“We’ve a room for you, witcher,” the old man said.

Geralt squinted at the alderman. Exhaustion was creeping in with the warmth, and Geralt wanted nothing more than to collapse in some corner somewhere for a few hours, but he also wanted to wake up again afterwards.

“And he’ll be safe here?” Jaskier asked.

The alderman let out his breath in a prolonged sigh, then nodded. The old man stepped close to grip Geralt’s shoulder hard. “You’re safe here as anywhere, white wolf.”

Jaskier was still scowling at everyone in the room suspiciously. “Anything happens to the witcher, and I will murder every one of you in your sleep,” he promised.

Geralt couldn’t help his huff of a laugh. Not caring what their human audience might think, he snaked one arm around the bard’s waist and cinched him close. He buried his nose in Jaskier’s hair and inhaled the smell of home.

Turns out, inviting Jaskier to Kaer Morhen had been the best idea Geralt ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wham, a whole monster hunt jammed into one chapter. Just a cute little epilogue to go! Thanks being with me on this journey.


	9. Chapter 9

On midsummer’s eve, Geralt fought a herd of arachnomorphs. Was ‘herd’ the right word for a dozen, loosely aligned giant spiders living together in a cave? As a witcher, Geralt should probably know. But the cave was dark, so he took a cat potion, and the skittery little bastards kept running from him, so he took a thunderbolt to make every hit count. And they kept spitting web at him that bound his arms in sticky ropes; he was utterly helpless while they darted in to hit his back, his legs. Every time he fought his way free, they hit him with more web, and his heart was racing human fast, and his breath was coming in little pants, and all his strategy went out the window. So he ended up taking a White Raffard's too…and now he was toxic. Purple-black veins stood out all over his body, spidering up his neck into his face and tinging his vision green.

Geralt could hear the bard long before he could see him. He was playing his lute and singing at the top of his lungs, banging into cookpots and brushing past trees as he tromped around their campfire in nervous circles.

It was giving Geralt a headache, and he was still half a mile away. But he had a dozen cuts, he was covered in _fucking spiderwebs,_ and his white honey was with the bard. Unless he wanted to spend the night writhing on the forest floor, bleeding black blood that killed the undergrowth, he was going to have to brave the cacophony.

He began making noise of his own as he got closer to camp. He’d startled the bard once, coming back one morning on cat-quiet feet without thinking, and Jaskier had thrown his lute at him. Only Geralt’s quick reflexes saved them both the heartache of replacing the instrument.

“Geralt?” Jaskier whispered. He had frozen with one foot in the air to take his next step. It would have been funny if everything didn’t hurt so much.

 _Hey,_ Geralt signed as he entered the circle of firelight.

“Oh boy,” Jaskier breathed out.

Geralt managed a grunt. It probably looked as bad as it felt. He didn’t realize he’d shut his eyes until he felt a weight on his shoulder. He shuddered away from it instinctively before he recognized it must be Jaskier.

“Sit,” Jaskier said, still feather soft.

Cursing himself, Geralt sat, keeping his back to the fire. Even through his eyelids the light was making his head pulse. He clapped one hand over his eyes.

“What do you need?”

 _White honey,_ he signed one-handed into the darkness.

A vial was pressed into his palm. With a sniff, he confirmed it was white honey before taking a few swallows. _Thanks, little lark,_ he signed in the direction of Jaskier’s breathing.

“I’ll keep watch,” Jaskier said. Geralt heard him move to the other side of the fire and settle, then blessed stillness settled on the camp. Sucking in a deep breath, then another, Geralt sought refuge in meditation.

*

Birdsong gently prodded Geralt out of meditation. Birdsong, and Jaskier, standing at the edge of camp, hissing at the birds.

“I’ve had about enough of you!”

“What are you doing.” Geralt asked, because surely not even Jaskier could get in a fight with songbirds. He looked over his shoulder at his ridiculous companion.

“They’re, uh, they’re making too much noise.”

“It’s in their nature. I’m inclined to forgive them for it.” He raised an eyebrow at Jaskier.

“Oh, I see what you did there! Very good, I like it. The wolf and the songbird, it practically writes itself.” The bard leapt for his packs, then staggered to a stop. “Feeling better?”

“Fine,” Geralt said. He stretched carefully. He was still covered in spiderwebs, but otherwise, he’d been worse. Much, much worse.

Geralt turned to face the fire and began stripping off his armor. When he was down to the shirt beneath, he sat and began preparing breakfast. 

Jaskier settled next to the witcher and dug his journal out of his pack. Peeking out of the corner of his eye, Geralt could see the bard sketching. He was recording _little lark_ for the book of signs he and Eskel had created over the winter. It was safely back in Kaer Morhen, but Jaskier insisted on keeping a record of new signs to add to it when they returned. It made Geralt’s chest fuzzy to imagine long winter nights by the fire with Jaskier and his brothers, sketching and signing. 

“You do seem better,” Jaskier said, still sketching. “But It’s ok not to be fine.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He shifted a bit so their sides were pressed together shoulder to hip, grounding himself in the contact.

Jaskier smiled as he finished his sketch with a flourish and started on another entry, white honey.

“The spider web,” Geralt said. He hummed and switched to signs. _It feels like shackles. It gets around you, sticks your arms to your sides. It makes you helpless. Hate remembering how that feels._

“I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how much that sucks.”

Geralt huffed. _No, you can’t. I’m glad._

“I’m listening, if you want to try and explain, though.”

Watching the bard from the corner of his eye, Geralt considered. _Maybe someday. Thanks, little lark._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet epilogue, hope it doesn't disappoint too much. 
> 
> Thanks everyone who read and kudos'd, and especially those folks who commented! I think the last few chapters were longer and more logical bc of your feedback, and I know that I appreciated rediscovering how supportive the fandom life is. Stuff is bad out there, but you all make it better by creating and supporting other creators. 
> 
> Keep on keeping on, beautiful people.


End file.
